Governor orders all wards removed within 60 days

Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration will announce Friday that all state wards at the beleaguered Maryville Academy will be moved out within 60 days, effectively closing the Des Plaines facility for troubled youths, administration sources said.

All of the 140 children will be moved to other facilities within the state. The 39 most severe cases will be moved within the next 30 days.

While Blagojevich will effectively close the 120-year-old Des Plaines campus, satellite facilities Maryville operates at other locations will remain open, the sources said.

Officials from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago and Maryville will be meeting to see if the Des Plaines facility can be restored as a viable treatment center, but no timetable has been set.

Daley and Murphy on Thursday urged that the state's largest youth home be kept open even as they disagreed on whether its longtime leader should remain.

Murphy, who has been critical of Rev. John Smyth, Maryville's leader of 42 years, said the institution should be saved but Smyth had to go.

"Smyth has become a lightning rod," Murphy said. "If he takes himself out, he could save the facility."

Daley, however, issued a ringing defense of Smyth and charged that the state is trying to make him a scapegoat for controversies over the questionable care of some Maryville youths that have led to a federal criminal investigation of the facility.

Accusing Maryville critics of "picking on" Smyth, Daley said that if he were in Smyth's position, he would close Maryville and let DCFS figure out what to do with the troubled youths served at the institution's flagship Des Plaines campus.

"I would shut my door and say, `You take these kids, Illinois.' I would put them in the State of Illinois Building. When the Police Department finds them that night, we bring them to the Thompson Center, and here they are. That's your problem," Daley said.

A self-proclaimed "fan" of Smyth, Daley acknowledged that Maryville is not problem-free. But over its long history, the mayor said, it has been "one of the finest facilities in the country."

Blagojevich has said he has been "troubled" by incidents of suicide and sexual assaults at the group home.

Two state-paid monitors examining Maryville for nine months gave a report on Maryville's progress in improving oversight of the youths to the state Monday.

Late last year, state officials stopped placing additional youths at the facility, and since then the population of Maryville residents has dropped from 272 to about 140. Virtually all of the youths living at Maryville's Des Plaines campus are under the guardianship of DCFS.

Murphy charged that any decision by Blagojevich to close Maryville would be based on politics, not the needs of children.

"Closing the institution is the easiest thing to do. It's brainless, spineless and politically expedient. The governor is then free, but you have kids forced into foster care," Murphy said. "To close it down is not an option."

Blagojevich rejected Murphy's assessment, arguing that his decision would be guided by the advice of child-welfare experts and based on what is best for Maryville's children.

"This is far too important an issue and this is far too big of an issue to play politics with," Blagojevich said. "And I just think those who want to suggest that--maybe they'll disagree with the outcome and the conclusion--but I think it does a disservice to the magnitude of what we're trying to do, to protect children.

"To simply dismiss decisions based on politics, I think that's, very frankly, almost insulting."

Residents and staffers at Maryville were awaiting Blagojevich's decision with trepidation.

Michael Svoboda, 18, a state ward who said he has lived at Maryville for four years, said closing the facility would change his life "drastically."

"If Maryville does shut down, I have nowhere to go," he said. "This has almost been the best place I've been in 15 years. I was in foster homes before this, it didn't work out. I was moved here, and everything's just fallen into place. I feel lucky that I live here. I do. I have nowhere to go at the moment."

Murphy on Thursday released an analysis of problems at Maryville, and DCFS officials who had read it said they found little new, according to agency spokeswoman Jill Manuel.

"We felt [it] was a very accurate depiction of what's happening at Maryville," Manuel said. "We are taking it under advisement."

Manuel declined to comment on Smyth's leadership, stressing that any decision to keep him on or let him go is up to Maryville's board of directors and the Chicago archdiocese, which oversees the facility.